David Attenborough
[Editor's Note] The story begins with a 26-year-old Young British Man. That was 70 years ago, when his application to work for the BBC – in that era, referring to work for radio programmes – was rejected. However, someone saw his unsuccessful application letter and asked him if he was interested in working for a TV station. He agreed.
The young man was the producer and host of some of the BBC's most popular nature documentaries, David Attenborough. He was not only a brilliant naturalist, but also a brave explorer and traveler. He is known as the "father of nature documentaries" and has produced a number of world-renowned documentaries such as the "Life Trilogy" and "Earth Pulse". He is also trustee of the British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Vice President of the Royal Society for the Conservation of Birds and President of the Royal Society for Conservation of Nature.
In 1987, the Queen and David Attenborough were at the Royal Stables, preparing to deliver a Christmas address
At the age of 90, David Attenborough published this autobiography that looks back on his career from the ages of 26 to the age of 90, documenting his passion for the natural world and his lifelong desire to understand nature.
Life on air: The Autobiography of David Attenborough; David Attenborough; Yi He, Jinxuan Li/Translation; Chongqing University Press; 2020-12
Paraguay's mosquito bites and butterfly phalanxes
Hearing that we had arrived, a man and a woman came out to greet us in the pouring rain. They were Sandy's friend Nennito and his wife. We sheltered from the rain in their little hut, but only another place to sleep was squeezed out inside. Undoubtedly, Sandy is the best place to sleep there. Nanito said Charles and I could sleep in a smaller hut, which was their storage room. When we opened the door, two bats flew out. Other bats, perhaps as reluctant to go out in the rain as we do, stop at rafters to rest, turning their heads to look at us as we enter the door. The room smelled pungent, from rotten corned beef, from three large jars standing against the wall under a crude wooden frame. Only one hammock can be hung in the room. Charles hung up on the bed and curled up inside. I lay on a shelf above a stinking meat can.
In the studio, David Attenborough shows an armadillo to the audience
Lying in the darkness, I think I heard a strange clanging sound around me, even though the rain kept rustling on the thatched roof. I turned on the flashlight and found that the mud and slatted walls less than an inch from my ears were covered with a layer of shiny cockroach mobile mantles that crawled out of the rotting beef in the jar below. When I shined on them with a flashlight, they all turned a corner, and the "cockroach curtain" sank under the shelf, like a projector curtain rolled up and retracted into the tube. After they disappeared, I turned off the flashlight. A few seconds later it started rustling again, and then I turned on the flashlight and found that the cockroaches had climbed up again. After tossing it like this two or three times, I gave up. After all, there was nowhere else to go, and it was better than sitting in the rain, though only a little better.
Irevu-Qua is simply an entomologist's paradise. It's not just cockroaches here, I've never seen such a large number and variety of stinging insects anywhere else. They will take turns. Mosquitoes are on the morning shift, and they are also divided into several kinds. The most toxic is a distinctive white-headed mosquito, fierce and abnormal. We had to sit and eat breakfast in the smoke of the wood that burned when we cooked, hoping in vain to keep them away. In the morning, they got off work and retreated to their old nest under the trees by the river. "Mbaragui" took over. It is a large, green-headed fly that leaves a dark red blood spot under its skin when it stings with a mouthpart. If you're moving fast enough, you'll have time to whip them up and pull them back. But the guys who persecuted us the hardest didn't even give us this satisfaction. It was a tiny black fly the size of a dust particle called "polverines," so small that you couldn't believe they were creatures — until you start tickling because they sting you. Mosquito nets can't stop their long drive, and pesticides are completely useless. From the afternoon to the evening, and throughout the night that followed, they kept us miserable until dawn when the white-headed mosquitoes came back to take over.
However, in addition to the many torments that insects bring us, they also bring unforgettable brilliance to Irevuwa. There are a lot of butterflies here. After a rainstorm, the sky is like a wash, the sun is fiercely scorching the rocks by the river, and it will feel hot when you step on it barefoot. Thousands of butterflies appeared, like showers, like fierce winds, like whirlpools, like blizzards. There are so many of them that you can't even see through them the open space opposite. They flew down from the tall trees around them, like ribbons flying in New York City's triumphant parade. I have no idea how to make even the roughest estimate of their number. I tried to collect some butterflies flying around the huts, and when I collected more than ninety different varieties, I gave up. These butterflies are not very large. Some are pure sulfur yellow and some are intense orange. One has a red stripe running through the forewings and a blue flash on the hindwings. There is also a wing outer edge showing a fine jagged edge. There is a butterfly that Sandy calls "Eighty-Eight" because it has an elegant pattern of the black number "88" at the bottom of its body.
The team is ready to take a high-altitude hot air balloon to catch the spiders in the air
Downstream in the river, the river gently laps at the narrow sandy beach where there are other species, large butterflies. Butterflies with wings that extend into a black comma-like caudal protrusion at the back of the wings have at least six or seven varieties, some with a black pattern on a yellow background and some with a velvety pure black with dark red spots embedded in them. Each butterfly seems to be attracted by the pattern of its own race when choosing a place to stay, so each butterfly population gathers its own phalanx on the shore.
Butterflies are close to each other in the procession, their upright wings flapping, and their mouthparts coiled under their heads like clockwork, digging into the sand to absorb moisture. This allows them to ingest dissolved salt from the river water and then squirt other useless ingredients from the back of the abdomen. If we approach carefully, we can sit next to them. Then the butterflies would fly over and stop at our hands and faces, sucking the salt in our sweat, which is much higher than the concentration of salt in the river. It's a pleasure to feel their silky mouthparts bouncing around our skin, but at the cost of sweaty skin, mosquitoes prefer sweaty skin to butterflies. It would be great luck to enjoy butterflies tickling us without being bitten by mosquitoes.
A customs adventure tour of Tonga
Ancient rituals have been collated and codified as a tool for maintaining social order and status quo, and the Taumaf-Kava ceremony in Tonga is a prime example. In fact, we were hired to assist in this process. But in the Southwest Pacific, there are many other types of customs that we can photograph. Some are in decline, some have been transformed to attract tourists, and some have just sprouted and are in full swing. However, the rarest of them are those low-key, inconspicuous types, which, although old, are still quietly circulating in remote and little-known places. We found one on vanuambalavu. This small island and six other smaller islands form a group of islands nestled between Tonga and Fiji.
We live in a small village in Lomaloma. Looking back on the past forty years, it looked like an incredibly simple Polynesian paradise, as if it had been taken directly from the drawing board of a Hollywood designer. The houses here are all thatched houses and there are no corrugated tin roofs in sight. The open space between the houses is covered with manicured lawns, and bright red hibiscus and purple bougainvillea bloom freely everywhere. There is a strong scent of plumeria in the air, palm trees grow on the shores of the blue-crystal lagoon, and the monsoon blows steadily and gently among the feathered leaves. I couldn't believe there was such a view, but it was true.
Government officials in Suva, fiji's capital and modern metropolis, sent us two men of the same age as us as guides. Both guides have some family ties in loma loma – this is always very useful and hard to refuse in the Polynesian region. In accordance with local custom, we brought gifts, including whale teeth, which are still indispensable today, which we bought in government stores. We were greeted by the local chief "mbuli" and assigned a house for us to stay in. We slept on the ground covered with silky silky pandanus leaf blankets. Most mornings, we go to the lagoon to swim with the men and catch fish to eat. At night, everyone drank cava together and exchanged songs that they would sing to each other. It's really hard for us to remember, it's hard to remember, and there's still a film to make.
We came to this small island to photograph a little-known fishing ritual. The ceremony took place in a shallow lake between the low hills in the center of the island. The large freshwater fish growing in the lake taste extremely delicious. It is said that if the ritual is performed correctly, the fish will jump out of the water on their own and fall into the hands of the people. There was a tribal priest who guarded the lake, and for many years he had not allowed people to fish from it. But now, under pressure from the Loma Loma people and several other coastal villages, the fishing ceremony is about to take place again.
Attenborough and local men
Half of the people in All Of Loma Loma went to the lake and camped on the shore. We also went with them. The priest had arrived there, and when each group of men arrived, they would offer him cava wine – known here as "yanggona". When everyone had arrived, he announced the rules of the ceremony, all very specific: that night, everyone, without exception, had to swim in the lake; he could not wear anything except skirts made of the leaves of a particular plant in the surrounding bushes; and everyone was to be coated with coconut massage oil with the aroma of crushed buds, which was made in the village. If someone ignores these rules, the lake will punish him and bite his skin. All night long, people have to swim in pairs, floating themselves on the water with logs carved into specific shapes. In any case, the lake cannot be empty. If these rules are strictly enforced, in the morning, the fish will be delivered to the door by themselves.
Our friends in Loma Loma don't need encouragement, and neither do we. We helped each other apply massage oil and put on leaf skirts. We swam around the lake and sang. About an hour later, we came out of the lake, drank some cava, ate some pork and chicken grilled on the fire, and then went back for a swim. As the early hours of the morning came, the secrets of the lake were no longer mysterious. A slight smell of hydrogen sulfide began to drift out of the lake. The lake is shallow, and the fallen leaves of the trees on the surrounding shore sink to the bottom of the lake, rotting to form a thick layer of silt. Therefore, a large number of people do not stop swimming, they stir up the silt, release the gas at the bottom of the water, so that the lake water becomes weakly acidic.
In the early hours of the morning, the acidity of the water is getting higher and higher, so the fish swim to the surface. These fish are about two feet long, and it is not difficult to catch the tail of the fish. But the time has not yet come. The priest would say when he could fish, and we had to wait for him to speak. At dawn, more people drank or snoozed in the camp than in the lake, but according to the priest's instructions, there were still people in the lake. When the warm sun rises, the enthusiasm of the people returns. In the morning, the priest issued another command. At this time, all the people in the camp rushed to the lake and jumped into the water. The commotion stirred up the surface of the lake full of fish jumping out of the water. Some of the fish were spear-forked by the men, some jumped too close to the swimmer and could be caught with their hands, and some jumped directly to the shore near the shore. Soon, hundreds of fish were lying on the banks of the river, waiting to be distributed and roasted over the fire. While the people were feasting, the camp once again sounded a cheerful song.
The benefits of ritualizing such an event and placing it under the control of a priest are obvious. The lake is relatively small, and if left unchecked, fish can easily catch out. This method of fishing requires a lot of people to swim, and it requires an authoritative person to organize and coordinate. Ritual rules require people to apply oil to the body to prevent the acid produced when stirring the mud from irritating the skin. The reason for not wearing anything but a leaf skirt is also obvious, after all, this is a carnival.
Editor-in-Charge: Qian Chengxi
Proofreader: Liu Wei